Reply #6: Why Elections Are Not About Politics

[Mnemosyne]

New from VoteTrustBlog
By Warren Stewart, Director of Legislative Issues and Policy, VoteTrustUSA
October 27, 2005
It has been suggested that the recent report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform represented a compromise, or more precisely, a trade-off, between issues that meant most to the Republicans (voter ID) and those that meant most to the Democrats (VVPAT). The trade may never have been explicit, but could have just emerged from the fault lines on the panel as they struggled to reach a unanimous agreement. Needless to say, I have no way of knowing about the internal politics of the Commission, but I strongly object to the glib assumption of a political polarity between Voter ID and VVPAT.

In fact, elections are not about politics. I know that sounds absurd but hear me out. Elections are an idea - an old idea by now, but an idea that somehow always seems innovative. Let’s collectively decide what should happen and agree that we’ll all have an equal part in making those decisions. We’ll all indicate our opinions - let’s call them votes - and we’ll all accept the results.

There are three basic principles underlying the notion of elections: every eligible voter should be able to vote, nobody should get more than one vote, and everyone’s votes should be counted correctly. Sounds simple. It is when those three basic principles are subject to manipulation that politics gets involved.
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